1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to voting systems, and particularly to an electro-mechanical voting system which is inexpensive to build and operate and wherein the possibility of fraud is eliminated.
2. General Description of the Prior Art
For several years efforts have been underway to substitute electronic voting system for purely mechanical ones because of the higher cost of purchase, maintenance, and operation of the latter. In accordance with this goal, at least one system has been developed and is in use in which voters are given a card upon which small punched holes are made to register a vote, and the cards are then taken by an election official and placed in a computer which reads the cards and records the results. In another voting system, a voter marks a substantially standard type of paper ballot, and the ballot is electronically read. Neither of these systems has proven to be satisfactory inasmuch as there is re-introduced paper (or cardboard) ballots which can be altered, thrown away, or additional ones introduced by a crooked election official just as was the case before mechanical voting machines were introduced. Further, and the most significant disadvantage with both of these systems is that the accuracy of reading a ballot depends upon voters physically effecting a ballot in a sufficiently uniform manner to meet the criteria of the electronic reader, a condition that is not highly reliable.
Another proposed solution to the problem has been to simply convert or add electrical switches to a voting keyboard connected to a computer terminal. As far as is known, this type of system has not been found acceptable, one reason being that it requires a computer terminal for each keyboard, increasing costs to a point where little or no advantage is reflected over mechanical voting machines.
It is the object of this invention to overcome the aforesaid and other disadvantages of existing and proposed voting machines and to provide an improved voting system which is less costly to purchase, operate, maintain, and store than previous voting equipment, and which is, most importantly, fraudproof.